It’s been warming up in the Bull City and our house is not impervious to the temperature apparently. Early on I had assumed that our spiral stairs to the partially finished attic would be a bane to the efficiency of the environmental controls in the house. Ah, how true. Although I suspected it was not the fault of the new HVAC system I called CWJ, the company that installed our new gas pack 3 months ago. The good news in this story is that the CWJ’s service was great. I called at around 7PM and they were out in about 20 minutes. Very thorough, very polite, and willing to talk about things unrelated to their system that I should do to improve the environment in the house. Try that with American Home Shield.

Which brings me to my next point: Attic ventilation. Why hasn’t anyone in the 64 years since my house was built think ventilation might be important? No idea. Perhaps the finishing of the attic has exacerbated things. Either way, I’ve got some work to do. First we’ll insulate the vestibule at the top of the stairs, then we’ll install some soffit venting to compliment the continuous ridge vent, and we’ll think about prying up the planking in the attic to increase the insulation between the attic and the ceiling below.

I’ve had this fantasy of blowing insulation into the walls of the house, too. However, I don’t want to damage the original asbestos siding and I hate to drill holes all over the plaster interior walls so that might not happen. Asbestos siding is actually super-high quality stuff and never needs to be repainted. Replacement windows are out. Our windows are lovely and new windows don’t let light through in the same way.

I’ve managed to line up the inspectors. We’re using Brent Willet who has the wonderfully named website www.dontbuyituntiliinspectit.com. We’re going on the recommendation of a colleague at my library who also lives in Durham. Willet recommended a pest inspector, Patrick Holland. They charge $325 and $75, respectively, so we’ll be paying less than we anticipated for inspections. Brent tells me that in 16 years he has never seen radon in Durham (we’re over clay, not granite) so we’ll skip the $125 radon test. We’d also like to get the wood-burning fireplace and chimney inspected but we’ll probably wait on that.

We’ve decided to use the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union for our mortgage. They have very competitive rates, don’t sell mortgages, and all of my fellow librarians rave about it. We also considered Duke University Federal Credit Union, USAA, and Wachovia. Duke was the only real contender but I couldn’t face paying 3.5 points in closing. I put together a comparison page while we were shopping for a lender. Looks like the going rate is 6.25%.

I’ve also called Bullock Floor Sanding and Refinishing and Banks Flooring, but neither has returned my call. I expect the floor refinishing to cost $2.25 or so a square foot and, at circa 950 square feet of hardwood floors, that’s pretty expensive. I don’t have the time to do it myself. I’ve done it before but I don’t think it looked that great. Sorry Tom. Of course, if we don’t do them before we move in we won’t do refinish them at all. Living in the same house with that much floor refinishing isn’t meant to be.

Update: Brent was good. We’d use him again. We paid him extra to come out and reinspect following the alleged repairs and he seemed less invested, but it was subtle. Patrick was great. He inspired confidence in us. The Credit Union has been great to deal with. I wouldn’t deal with a commercial lender if I had a choice. The Credit Union also rarely (or never, not sure) sells loans, which is good.